Free your body - Tonic herbs for recovery, flexibility & strength
Nothing is solid, permanent or resistant to change. Knowing when to bend and when to stand tall matters. New opportunities encourage us to become more conscious, especially those which feel the most challenging at first. We can meet, block or transcend these moments. Knowing when to reach for a less habituated response can be messy. Sometimes it's awkward or a struggle to find solid ground when we take a different stance.
Pain, tension, repetitive and unhelpful thoughts often follow periods of stifled movement and self-imposed limitations. Intentionally moving out of our comfort zone can awaken and nourish the body. It may unlock painful memories we've buried deep in the body and allow us to move from the suffocating tendency to gravitate towards low-grade depression or constant overwhelm and remember our desire to create, strive for and welcome new adventures.
Press play, not repeat!
Habits can be a funny thing. Good and bad. Life-giving & depleting. Simply pressing repeat on behaviours, choices and our responses isn't always an option. Trying something new, something bitter, sour or a little 'out there' can enrich our lives in unexpected ways. The wider our intake - be that information, food, ideas, experiences or feedback - the more resourced, adaptable and dependable we become. Exploring, having fun and learning to think, move and act in unexpected ways can be liberating and empowering.
Approximately 37 billion, trillion biochemical reactions are taking place in our bodies every single second! Every moment, there is a symphony of connection, movement and communication happening on the cellular, personal and cosmic levels of existence. Habits can be helpful, they can also reduce life to a series of robotic manoeuvres that leave us thirsty for spontaneity. Nourishing ourselves on every level - honouring our responsibilities and commitments (including the promises we make to ourselves) - and allowing ourselves to be flexible, keeps our stress-levels down and ensures we have enough energy to run all those biochemical processes in the background with ease.
Learning to Move
Movement & communication are the foundational bedrocks of life. Hinder those processes, starve the body of what it needs and havoc reigns in our systems. Being tied to our desks or conditioned to move in very restrictive patterns corrupts the body's integrity.
When was the last time you saw another adult crawl or jump around like a monkey? We walk in straight lines, sit and stand off balance and often allow our bodies to only perform a very basic range of movements.
As stiffness builds up, we loose connection with the pleasure of movement. But give the body just an inch and it will replenish you with bucketfuls of happy hormones. Becoming a little out of breath helps clear brain fog, strenuous activity helps us sleep better, hanging like a chimp takes the strain off slumping shoulders which helps ease headaches, failing eyesight and wrinkles!
How can herbs help?
For movement, here are our top 4 tonic herbs
Deer Velvet: No.1 tonic herb for supporting athletic performance, helping improve muscle tone, strength and endurance. Stimulates the production and circulation of blood. Often taken to reduce physical fatigue.
Panax Ginseng: In TCM, Ginseng is recognized as the “King of Herbs” for building Qi (Energy). If you need help to get going again, try this one. Stimulating, relieves stiffness, fatigue and pain caused by stagnant or deficient Qi. Helps tonify and strengthen the spleen. A weak spleen can manifest as over-thinking and anxiety. A healthy spleen gets us up, moving and flowing.
Cordyceps: The tonic of transformation. Try Cordyceps when you're ready to push through to the next level - at work, in training or in your personal life. Cordyceps contains adenosine, a nucleic acid that increases the production of the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is at the core of delivering energy to muscles. When you're stuck, exhausted or depleted from strenuous activity, be that a marathon or giving birth, look at Cordyceps to help you recover and shift gears.
Schisandra: Highly respected in TCM for its ability to assist multiple “meridians” within the body to help restore internal balance. Used by athletes as it works to balance the whole system. To move well, we need physical, mental and emotional balance. Once favoured by the Royal Chinese court as a youth preserver and powerful sexual tonic. When young, we generally move well, freely and are naturally energetic. Schisandra works to keep the body functioning optimally to make sure we don't dry up, harden and loose our vitality.
Holistic Bootcamp
The elite herbs of TCM don't just address specific issues - they gently, but deeply arouse the whole body by supporting major organs and their connected processes. We need foods and herbs that strengthen the whole, not 1 pill for this and another for that. Each system in the body moves and relates to the others in a constant feedback loop. If our hormones are out of whack, we can't think clearly. If our back hurts, we're often more susceptible to minor ailments.
We often need to learn that change is safe and desirable. Movement encourages the release of endorphins, our brain's feel-good hormones. When we move, we feel better, and when we feel better, we naturally feel safer, more confident and healthier. Having herbs which nourish the systems underpinning and energetically driving our physical processes helps us reduce any resistance to change by empowering these silent processes instead of relying on willpower or motivation alone. And as the feedback loop whirls into action with greater clarity and definition, we can keep refining our movements to feel better and better
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PLEASE NOTE: While tonic herbs are generally considered safe for daily use by most people, please do your own research before taking any supplement and seek the advice of a trained holistic practitioner or TCM herbalist if appropriate.
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